Get a Teacher

Practice of the Week
Get a Teacher

Category: Key Supporting Practice

Have a group. Whatever your spiritual practice, you need others that you get together with to practice it -- in addition to the ways you practice on your own. If, say, cooking or gardening is your spiritual practice, then find -- or form -- a group of people that gather weekly, fortnightly, or monthly to practice together. This doesn't mean merely cooking or gardening together -- it means being together in the activity in a way that focuses on the spirituality of what you are doing. As you cook together, share your experiences of what's spiritual about this activity; as you garden together, talk about the spiritual lessons of gardening.

In addition to a group, consider a teacher for guiding you on your path and holding you and your practice in a relationship of accountability.

from Wayne Arnason, "Finding a Teacher," in Erik Walker Wikstrom, editor, Faithful Practices, adapted, abridged

Waiting in the line of students sitting on cushions outside the abbot's dokusan (interview) room, my heart beat rapidly and the sweat on my palms did not match the unusually cool summer day outside. I was about to have my first personal interview with a Zen teacher. The senior monks running this "Introduction to Zen Practice” retreat had prepared us for this interview by encouraging us to think of one question to ask. The encounter would be short. There would be a little bit of personal exchange after the question was posed, but not a lot. For Zen students doing formal koan practice, an interview can consist merely of a recitation of the teaching story under consideration, an opportunity for the student to respond to a question or image in the story, and a response from the teacher. The teacher's response can be quite minimal, perhaps as simple as ringing a bell to indicate that the interview is over. The response can also be more expansive, with further questions or reflections about the koan before the student leaves.

The senior monks had encouraged me to treat this interview as an opportunity to ask the Buddha a question – which both made sense and was extremely daunting. Finally, it was my turn. I stumbled through my recollection of the appropriate bowing rituals that begin the interview. I sat down on my knees and raised my head to look into the eyes of John Daido Loori, the man who would become my teacher. I spoke my name and my practice and then asked my question: "What do I have to give up to follow this path?”

Twenty years have passed since I asked that question. Because I am still answering it, I am no longer sure what Daido Roshi said to me that day. The best summary would probably be that I had to give up my expectations about what the path would be like and just walk on it.

Like thousands of other North Americans, I had grown up with a church affiliation and involvement but with an eclectic commitment to spiritual practice. My Unitarian Universalist church community provided me with many opportunities to explore different disciplines, and I did. I did not feel the need to seek out or commit to a personal relationship with a meditation teacher until mid-life. I was struggling with a stuck feeling, a combination of boredom and frustration with the meditation that had previously brought me joy and contentment. I decided that I needed to find a teacher. After a year of research and visits, I turned to a monastic community and teacher five hundred miles from where I lived for guidance and support in how to deepen my spiritual practice.

Why this extreme step? During much of my twenty-five years of sporadic meditation practice, I was missing a teacher and a sangha. The sangha includes both the teacher and the community of fellow practitioners. Coming to terms with the fact that I needed a teacher was not easy for me. I had to confront many old images and expectations of who I was. I am a grown-up. (Kids have teachers; grown-ups don't.) I was raised and continue to be a member of a liberal church tradition. (We build our own theologies.) Ultimately, what was hardest was admitting to myself that I didn't know what I was doing. In spite of all the sitting, the retreats, and the books, I really didn't have a clue what living and acting from within my true nature meant. I needed a teacher.

No matter where your spiritual home lies, whether within Jewish, Christian, Unitarian Universalist, Buddhist, or philosophical traditions, teachers are available, once you accept your need for one. Undertaking spiritual direction has become a vehicle for finding a teacher that requires no theological or participatory commitment to a religious tradition or institution. Developed within Roman Catholic spirituality, the skills of spiritual direction have become more widely available through teachers trained by respected nondenominational institutions.

Choosing a teacher well starts with knowing yourself, as well as learning as much as you can about the teachers available. Personalities, teaching styles, and teaching traditions vary. There are frauds.

A critical reason to seek out a teacher is to make your practice accountable. We live busy, complex, and changeable lives. There are dozens of reasons why it is difficult to sustain daily practice over time. We are masters at rationalizing why we can't meditate. Being accountable to a teacher, a community, and a tradition outside yourself can help.

The path I chose and followed for sixteen years was to become a formal student of the first monastery I went to in search of a teacher. As students, we committed ourselves to a Zen practice in our lives at home. We were expected to complete five “barrier gates” (five steps to help prospective students clarify their intent), sustain a relationship with a training director, attend two week-long sesshin retreats each year, and pursue our practice in each of eight different areas of training. The monastery also supported home practice through books and other resources as well as relationships with the teacher and training director.

When my teacher died, I searched again for a new teacher. That relationship became primary, and the residential experience became more difficult to sustain and less important to me. So I resigned my student status at the monastery. I may return to a residential sangha again, since it was such a valuable experience. I cannot imagine, however, being without a teacher.

For Journaling

Journaling question: What steps you would need to take to integrate the practice of working with a teacher into your own life?

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PRACTICES INDEX

Exercise

Practice of the Week
Exercise

Category: Supporting Practices: Observances that support and expand developing spirituality. They aren't "slogans to live by": they require setting aside some dedicated time. They aren't "occasional," but call for regular application. Nor are they merely "worth a try," since their value doesn't depend on whether you happen to have a taste for them.

from Scott Alexander, "Exercise," in Everyday Spiritual Practice, abridged and adapted.

Everyone knows that regular, vigorous exercise offers a wide constellation of health benefits, as well as a general enhancement of personal well-being and enjoyment of life. But what makes it a spiritual practice?

A spiritual practice is any regular, intentional activity that serves to significantly deepen the quality and content of your relationship with the miracle of life. For me, running is a spiritual practice that connects me in deep, satisfying, and enriching ways with myself, other people, my world, and the day.

The spiritual aspects of exercise are twofold. First, exercise has meditative and reflective dimensions. Many who exercise regularly report that their physical discipline helps them to achieve a state of mindful and meditative peace and calm. If I relax while running – focus my mind on the regular rhythms of both my breathing and body movements, and let go of the distractions and complexities of my day – I often move into a spiritual state of being fully alive to the rich miracle of life both within and around me. I feel in soul-satisfying harmony with all that is: my body, the natural world, other people, even what I call God. While running does not always bring me to this calming, meditative place, regular exercise can often be a time to meditate, to become more aware of and grateful for life.

Second, the regular practice of exercise establishes an overall spiritual “right relation” with myself, my world, and other beings who share it with me. If I care for the body that houses and holds me, I will be more inclined and more able to care for other lives around me.

So taking responsible care of your own bodily temple can properly be seen as a primary spiritual practice of care and connection to all the infinite intricacies of reality. Any form of regular, vigorous exercise can be a discipline of spiritual self-care that naturally leads to spiritual other-care, and thus to right relation with all you encounter and touch.

For many of us, regular exercise is easier said than done. Only about 20 percent of Americans regularly exercise enough to achieve any cardiovascular benefit. The legacy of mind-body dualism permeating Western thought encourages us to devalue and neglect things we deem merely physical – including our bodies and the earth itself.

Human wholeness and health are impossible if we separate the spiritual from the physical in our lives. It is sometimes helpful to have words like “spirit” and “body,” but we must be careful not to let our language lead us to think that these are different things. There is just one reality. Though we occasionally look at it through different lenses – attend to its differing functionalities – we shouldn’t forget the oneness, for this is what connects us to all life and to the holistic mystery that is being itself.

My friend Edward Frost writes,

“Having survived a heart attack and a quadruple bypass, I decided I’d like to go on living. I began to exercise regularly, three times a week at the club. I hated every minute of it. My mind dragged my body to the club. Now, however, my exercising is an everyday, deeply spiritual whole-person experience – not something I do simply to stay alive, but a profoundly satisfying part of my life.”

The fitness of the body is a fundamental necessity for being healthy, whole, and fully alive.

Getting started

First, refuse to allow yourself not to do it. The most frequently used excuse is, “I just don’t have time,” but we must make time, disciplining ourselves to set it aside on a regular, faithful basis. Your aim, after all, is not just physical fitness but spiritual wholeness itself.

Second, begin slowly and appropriately given your physical condition, age, body type, and personal preferences. Making grand (and unrealistic) resolutions is only likely to lead you quit (in frustration and shame) within a week. Build up your exercise routine gradually, allowing both your body and your personal schedule to adjust to these new demands (and delights!) Be sensible and patient – and stick with it!

Third, do check with your physician to ensure that your body is ready for the rigors – even if slowly built up to – that you are planning.

Every day, almost without exception, I take an hour to tend my relationship with my oldest and most intimate friend – my body, or, rather, my self – for body is self. Noon is my favorite time to lace up a pair of running shoes, do a little stretching and step outside – regardless of weather – for a good, swift run. The daily run is almost always the most enjoyable part of my day. I love the expansive freedom, love noticing the pleasing intricacies and healing grace of the natural and the human worlds: sunlight kissing a passing cloud, a cormorant gracefully diving for a fish, children playing in sand. I love the experience of being so present and alive. And I love the feeling when I have finished – that glow of accomplishment and invigoration – that returns me to my day refreshed, reawakened, and rejuvenated. I am ready and able to meet the duties and demands of my day relaxed, focused, alert, patient, and eager. My regular exercise routine helps me stay in healthy right relation – with myself, nature, other persons, indeed all of existence itself – and allows me to feel truly at home in my body and in the world.

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PRACTICES INDEX

Make Monthly Budgets

Practice of the Week
Make Monthly Budgets

Category: Supporting Practices: Observances that support and expand developing spirituality. They aren't "slogans to live by": they require setting aside some dedicated time. They aren't "occasional," but call for regular application. Nor are they merely "worth a try," since their value doesn't depend on whether you happen to have a taste for them.

Meredith Garmon

If spirituality is about anything, it’s about waking up and paying attention – noticing our own lives, for which the first step is noticing how often we aren’t noticing our own lives. Attention includes attention to money.

First, make a budget. If at your house, there is a precise monthly budget, and you keep track of every dollar spent and what budget category it falls under, then you are doing a wonderful spiritual practice of noticing your life and what it is for. Making a budget and knowing where and when you exceed it really is a deep spiritual practice of paying attention to your life.

The important point is to do two things at the end of every month: (1) compare your actual spending to what you budgeted for that month -- make note of which line items you stayed within and which ones you exceeded, and (2) make a budget for the next month. Whether or not you actually do stick to your budget might or might not be so important, depending on your financial situation. In some situations, making and keeping a budget is a crucial financial practice. Even if, for you, budgeting might not be a financial necessity, it is a spiritual practice of being mindful how your resources are deployed to do good to yourself and others. Awareness of which line items are consistently over or under budget presents you with the question: Do you want to adjust your budget or adjust your spending? Which adjustment will be most conducive to your and the world's flourishing? That's an important and a spiritual question for reflection -- a key question for living intentionally. But you can't begin to address that question until you're making a budget and comparing your spending to it.

Second, as you review at the end of each month how your actual spending compared to your budget for that month, take that opportunity to reflect on what your spending on yourself did for you that month. Every "outgo" (you know, the opposite of "in-come") that isn't saving or donating is spending on yourself (or your family). Then the question for each such expense is: "Is this really helping me/the family? What spending is helping me/us be happy, improving my/our overall well-being, and what really isn’t? Am I spending more than what’s doing me/us any good?"

Maybe your next budget can begin shifting some money out of the spending categories and into one of the two other categories: saving and giving. It’s amazing how willing human beings are to keep buying stuff that not only isn’t helping them be any happier, but is actually making them unhappy. Studies show that as we become less materialistic, our well-being improves, and that as our well-being improves we become less materialistic. It’s a spiritual practice of health and joy to intentionally assess whether the spending on yourself is helping – and how much of it is harmful habits that are only weighing you down. In particular, if that spending has been leading to debt, then it’s a double-killer: you carry the burden of the debt and of the materialism.

Third, as you draft each budget, think about whether it would work for you to give away more. What’s your money for? It’s for doing good in the world. Take care of yourself – which includes not spending on what you don’t need – and give away the rest. I like the website givewell.org for rating charities for maximum effectiveness for every dollar you give.

There are two categories of charity and social good organizations: (1) those that directly help people who are suffering, and (2) those that work for systemic change, reforming the systems that create suffering. Giving food to the hungry doesn’t address the need to change the system that leaves people hungry. At the same time, supporting systemic change so that eventually everyone will be able to feed themselves doesn’t feed any of the people who are hungry right now. So my suggestion would be dividing your charitable giving evenly between those two categories.

Fourth, for saving and giving, think in terms of percents. What percent of your total income can you save? What percent can you, or do you want to, give away? A good starter guideline is 10-10-80. Save 10 percent. Give away 10 percent. Live on the other 80 percent. 10-10-80.

Certainly at different phases of life, and at different income levels, those percentages need to be different. Maybe you can afford to be giving away 20 percent. Or 50 percent. Don’t be stuck on 10 percent giving if you have open to you the possibilities of giving away much higher percents. There is such amazing joy in that – don’t hold yourself back if you don’t need to.

Or maybe saving 10 percent is too much because your retirement is as set as it needs to be, and you have no debts, and your kids' inheritance is already as substantial as it needs to be. (A little inheritance is nice, but a big inheritance may take from your kids the benefits that come from facing tough challenges. Large inheritance doesn't, in fact, do the recipient any favors, though they may not know that at the time.) In some circumstances, saving 10 percent is too much. Don’t be stuck on that 10 percent either.

But as a beginning point for being intentional about who you are in the world, what your resources stand for, try 10-10-80. Try living into 10-10-80 for a year or so and then see what adjustments would be fulfilling, given your position.

Spirituality is a path – it’s a path of awareness and intentionality, of waking up to ourselves and what we are and what we’re doing instead of being pulled along by unexamined habits and impulses. Spirituality of money recognizes that what we do and are includes what we do and are with our resources.

Ariel Kiley writes:

Budgeting is a spiritual practice! A spiritual practice is one where you consciously choose to tune in to and follow the guidance of your higher self. When you are spending money unconsciously, you are following the whims of your unconscious urges, you are at the mercy of your ungrounded fantasies, your wounded ego or your victim mentality. By consciously tracking your spending, earnings and planning where you money is going to go to serve your highest values and callings in life, it become seriously spiritual.

Ariel -- a NYC-based yoga and meditation teacher -- has a created a series of videos about financial freedom that might be inspiring. Here are the links:
#1: The Decision to Get Out of Debt
#2: The Debt I've Been Dragging Around
#3: January 2018 Budget
#4: January Review
#5: February 2018 Budget
#6: February Review

For list of all weekly practices: "Practices of the Week Index"

Mindfulness

Practice of the Week
Mindfulness

Category: Supporting Practices: observances that support and expand developing spirituality.

Adapted from James Austin, "Mindfulness," in Everyday Spiritual Practice

The experience of being mindful is not new to any of us. We may not have used the word mindfulness to describe our experience, but each waking moment requires some degree of this quality of awareness. We could not function in the world without knowing our experience from moment to moment.

Mindfulness, in this sense, is allowing our experience to be accepted into consciousness, letting us know what we are doing, providing the feedback to permit taking an action, performing a skill, or learning something new. Of course we always know on some level what we are experiencing, where we are, and what we are doing at any given time. It is also true that the degree to which we are really present in our experience varies a great deal throughout the day. There are many moments when the mind seems to be somewhere else completely!

Imagine carrying a full cup of hot tea from one room to another. You would pay attention to the cup, being aware of whether or not the tea was about to spill. You might slow down your walking speed or use two hands. The feedback of knowing what you are doing and the effect on the tea in the cup can all happen because you are present and focused in that moment.

There are also some moments when we are usually not very mindful. These moments are likely to occur when we think that what we are doing is not very interesting, or seems automatic because we have done this a thousand times before. So we let the mid drift off while we wash the dishes. “I could have done that in my sleep,” we say – and sometimes we did.

Mindfulness is a kind of remembering, remembering to be here, to be present to pay attention to this moment of life. When w bring awareness to this moment we know what we are doing and we know we are alive. It’s not so much that our fantasies, daydreams, and desires are not a natural part of life, rather it’s that we are so unaware of how much time we spend preoccupied with these thoughts.

Our mind has a mind of its own and easily wanders off into some fantasy of the future or some evaluation, judgement, or remembrance of the past. All this time, we sacrifice what is right in front of us: this present moment. If we do this repeatedly, our minds become a very busy place to live, running back and forth from past to future, while our experience of the present moment becomes shallow and unfulfilling.

We are often compulsive thinkers, never giving ourselves a rest from a constant inner conversation. In addition to our internal chatter, we receive a stream of language, read or heard. It becomes very easy to unconsciously assume that experience begins when we begin verbally describing it.

When the quality of mindfulness is stronger, we are more likely to see the process of thinking itself. In our more mindful moments we see the train of thought and its power for pulling us away from present experience. We begin to value drinking in sensory experience in a nonverbal way.

When there is too much thinking going on, it is hard to remain open and accepting of our experience. Both the outer world and our inner landscape is more lush when we are more aware. We have a more spacious mind, one which is less dismissive of nonverbal experience.

Unpleasant Experiences

Some experiences are unpleasant: intense grief, for example. When we try to avoid being with an emotion, by distracting ourselves or blotting out the experience with alcohol, we only lengthen the time it takes to work through the difficult emotion. Anger and fear have the power to take us over, to consume us. Being more mindful in this situation means we are more able to know what we are doing. We are able to step back a bit and really know that we are angry. This knowing creates a bit of space that can protect us from acting unwisely. When we are able to be with anger or fear, to hold it with our awareness even though it is unpleasant, it has less power over us.

Pain

Mindfulness practice is used in stress reduction and chronic pain clinics around the world because it has been shown that people can often lessen their suffering dramatically by becoming aware of and letting go of their resistance to the unpleasant sensations in their bodies. The automatic response to discomfort is for muscles to tense up, to want to push away the painful sensations. But tension and resistance only create more suffering. If we then add to that a mental script that supports our personal sense of suffering (thoughts of self-pity, for example), we have moved even farther away from easing our situation, by adding mental tension.

By becoming aware of these automatic responses, people can learn to relax and let go of some physical and emotional resistance to their situation. Patients report that they are surprised at how much of their suffering was caused by their resistance. When all the extras that are added on to a painful situation are stripped away, so that only the actual physical sensations are left, there can be less suffering.

Boredom

When we are patient enough to be even with our experience of boredom, we find it often transforms. We may find that the boredom was acting as a cover for some other more subtle unpleasant emotion that we did not want to experience. There may be something new to learn about ourselves if we choose not to immediately reach for a distraction, not to immediately run from the unpleasantness of boredom.

How

How do you get more mindful? See the Practices of the Week titled "Be Mindful"and "Cultivate Mindfulness."

There's also a helpful introduction to getting started with mindfulness practice: HERE.

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For list of all weekly practices: "Practices of the Week Index"

Mealtime Practice

Practice of the Week
Mealtime Practice

Category: Supporting Practices: observances that support and expand developing spirituality.

“Be there when you eat. Achieve the fullest experience of your food. Taste it. Savor it. Pay attention to it. Rejoice in it.” (Marc David)

Adapted from Aaron R. Payson, "Mealtime," in Everyday Spiritual Practice

Slowing Down, Being Together

I, too, became a part of the rushing crowd. As a student, I had grown accustomed to eating pizza at midnight as I studied for exams or grabbing a sandwich between classes. During the first year or so of my ministry and my marriage, I operated in much the same way. Meals were a grab-them-when-you-can, if-you-can prospect. Sitting down to eat was a novelty.

Many families struggle to juggle competing work schedules, school activities, and community commitments. It is nearly impossible to find time to sit down to share a meal together. Yet taking time to eat together can be one of the most important activities that families do.

Mealtime is a spiritual discipline: an activity through which those gathered may discover depth and meaning in their lives.

The speed with which we attempt to complete our lives and complete our meals ultimately hampers our experience of eating itself. That’s what was happening to me. Then one day as I was yet again eating what would pass for dinner alone at my desk in my office, I decided to put a stop to all the eating on the fly. It wouldn’t be easy, but I had the advantage of lessons learned as a child with my family around the dinner table.

Saying Grace

Eating is a sacred act, which is why, in most religious traditions, mealtime is made distinct from other activities by beginning with a time of grace of blessing so that those gathered to partake of the sustenance before them might be mindful of their connection to each other, to the environment, and to that which is holy around and within them.

“This food is the gift of the whole universe: the earth, the sky and much hard work. May we live in a way that makes us worthy to receive it. May we transform our own unskilled states of mind and eat with moderation. May we take only foods that nourish us and prevent illness. We accept this food so that we may realize the path of understanding and love.” (Zen mealtime sutra, Thich Nhat Hanh)

“The Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord for giving me the things I need – the sun and the rain and the apple seed. The Lord is good to me.” (attributed to Johnny Appleseed)

Mealtime grace is, for those who practice it, a key aspect of gratitude practice. Grace at mealtime is a ritual awakening to the reality of our relationship of gratitude for all that sustains us. Slowing down for gratitude also slows us down to more fully appreciate our food.

At one Thanksgiving meal in my childhood, we arrived at the dining room to discover five single kernels of corn on each person’s plate. We sat down, and Mother began, “It is said that when the pilgrims gathered at the first Thanksgiving table, each person was given just five kernels of corn, for that is all that they had to share. So now we take this opportunity to share with each other five things for which we are thankful this year.” I remember scrambling when my turn came. I expressed thanks for a new bike, roller skates, my new friend Jimmy, and even my little brother. The next year, and the next, and the one after that, became more important. As I grew, this ritual began to take on significance.

“I am thankful for the health of my family, for the opportunity to be together in the spirit of love, and for the gift of food.”

Setting a Place for One More

During Pesach, or Passover, families and communities celebrate their journey out of bondage to the promised land. As the table is set with the elements of the ritual Seder meal, a place is set for the prophet Elijah, who, during the course of the meal, is welcomed into the room and invited to the table, where a glass of wine is poured for him. My mother set an extra place at the table each night. Some nights, it went unused, and we thought about those whom we missed at our table. Many nights, however, the place got filled by an unexpected friend my brother or I brought home, or by a person who just stopped by for a moment to chat with my father, who was a minister.

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The ingestion of food is only a minuscule portion of what it means to take in sustenance. Reclaiming mealtime is a spiritual discipline when we remember the depth of our own connections to others, to the earth and the elements that help us to grow, and to the divine spark within each of us that ignites around good company and is aflame through the presence of love that is also the substance of grace.

I realized that if I just slowed down, breathed a little, I was already ahead of the game. Saying grace wasn’t so hard. I was and am grateful for many things.

A healthy spirituality grew our latest New Year’s dinner from an intimate gathering of six to an even more intimate fifteen. With the places all set, we delightedly took our time, getting to know each other, passing around the potatoes, and enjoying ourselves. We said grace. We talked of new things we had learned over the past year. We were too full to have dessert right away, which gave us an excuse to linger over coffee as our bodies and heart found the room.

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List of all weekly practices: "Practices of the Week Index"

Keep Sabbath

Practice of the Week
Keep Sabbath

Category: Supporting Practices: observances that support and expand developing spirituality.

Sabbath is traditionally Sunday (from the Christian tradition) or Friday-sundown to Saturday-sundown (Jewish tradition), but perhaps some other day works better for you. Set aside one 24-hour day every week for a personal retreat. If you can't manage more than half a day, then start with half a day. The important thing is to set aside a specific time each week for stepping back from work, from demands that you produce.

Sabbath time is an alternative to "the reduction of all human life to the requirements of the market" (Walter Brueggemann). It's a time for not going to work, not reading or writing any work-related email, not taking any work-related phone calls, not engaging any work-related projects or planning. Devote the time instead to:

• face-to-face time with family or friends,
• spiritual study or other spiritual practice,
• taking walks in a natural setting,
• playing music (unless you're a professional musician, in which case music is work, not Sabbath),
• other creative pursuit (painting, writing poetry or fiction -- again, as long as it's not your job).

For Unitarian Universalists with a standard Mon-Fri work schedule, Sunday may well work best. Sabbath is not intrinsically about worship, but including Sunday morning worship as a part of your Sabbath day a wonderful practice. (Ministers, on the other hand, often pick another day -- Monday, say -- as their Sabbath, since, for them, Sunday is a work day.)

You may also want to give yourself some prohibitions. Options might include, "no caffeine or alcohol" (allow yourself one day to confront life without mood enhancing substance), "no TV" (allow yourself time away both from work and from mindless distraction), or "no purchase or consumption of animal products" (one day a week of being vegan may help you feel more connected to life). Select rules for yourself that enhance the experience for you and that you feel good about. Whether or not you add any such rules, the main point of Sabbath is to put aside your work, put down the preoccupation with producing, and take a day to "lie fallow" and regenerate.

Take a look at Walter Brueggemann's 2014 book, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now.

"In our consumer culture we are restless and filled with desires for something more, better or different. The rat race keeps us moving at breakneck speed as we expend ourselves on work and deplete ourselves on draining pleasures such as reality television shows and professional sports." (from a review of Brueggemann's book)

Keeping Sabbath is a counter-cultural act. It means resisting the anxiety, coercion, exclusivism, and rushed multitasking that contemporary life demands. Modern society has elevated striving to such a height that it has become, for us, a spiritual disease. Life is not reducible to production and consumption -- a truth we are apt to forget if we do set aside Sabbath time in our week.

Make these five statements (appropriately adapted, as necessary, to the specifics of your situation) your mantra for your Sabbath times:

• You do not have to do more, sell more, or score more.
• You do not have to control more.
• You do not have to know more.
• You do not have to have your kids in ballet or soccer.
• You do not have to be younger or more beautiful.

For Journaling

Each week for the first 4-6 weeks of keeping Sabbath, write in your journal how you experienced it.

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For list of all weekly practices: "Practices of the Week Index"

Get Enough Sleep

Practice of the Week
Get More Sleep

Category: Supporting Practices: observances that support and expand developing spirituality.

From Rick Hanson, Just One Thing.

You need more sleep.

That is, unless you really are that rare person these days who's truly getting enough sleep. (Disclosure: that person is definitely not me.)

Without sufficient sleep, risks go up for car accidents, diabetes, heart disease, depression, and unwanted weight. And performance goes down in paying attention, learning, and staying motivated. Plus, it just feels bad to be foggy, groggy, tired, and irritable.

People don't get enough sleep for a variety of reasons. It's common to stay up too late and get up too early, and drink too much coffee to get going in the morning and too much alcohol to relax at night. Sleep problems are also a symptom of some health conditions—such as depression and sleep apnea—so talk with your doctor" if you have insomnia or if you still feel tired after seemingly getting enough sleep.

The right amount of sleep varies from person to person — and from time to time: if you're stressed, ill, or working hard, you need more sleep. Whatever it is that you need, the key is consistency: getting good rest every night, not trying to catch up on weekends or holidays.

After I left home, I often went back to visit my parents. They frequently told me I looked tired and needed more sleep. It bugged me every time they said it. But, you know what?

They were right. Almost everyone needs more sleep.

How

Two things get in the way of sufficient sleep: not setting enough time aside for it, and not having deep and continuous sleep during the time allotted.

In terms of the first problem:

• Decide how much time you want to sleep each night. Then, look at your schedule, see when you need to wake up, and work backwards to give yourself a bedtime. Figure out what you need to do during the hour before your bedtime to get to sleep on time; it probably includes not getting into an argument with anyone!
• Observe the "reasons" that emerge to stay up past your bedtime. Most if not all of them will boil down to a basic choice: what's more important, your health and well-being—or watching another hour of TV, doing housework, or (fill in the blank)?
• Really enjoy feeling rested and alert when you get enough sleep. Take in those good feelings, so your brain will want more of them in the future.

In terms of the second problem, issues with sleep itself, here are some suggestions; pick the ones that work for you:

• Consider the advice of organizations like the National .Sleep Foundation: have a bedtime routine; relax in the last hour or two before bed; stop eating (particularly chocolate), drinking coffee or alcohol, exercising, or smoking cigarettes two or three hours before bedtime; make sure the environment of your bedroom supports sleep (e.g., cool and quiet, good mattress, ear¬plugs if your partner snuffles or snores).
• Do what you can to lower stress. Chronic stress raises hormones like Cortisol, which will make it hard to fall asleep in the first place, or wake up early in the morning.
• Make a deal with yourself to worry or plan during the next day, after you get up. Shift your attention to things that make you feel happy and relaxed, or simply to the sensations of breathing itself. Bring to mind the warm feeling of being with people who care about you. Have compassion for yourself.
• Really relax. For example, take five to ten long exhalations; imagine your hands are warm (and tuck them under the pillow); rest a finger or knuckle against your lip; relax your tongue and jaw; imagine you are in a very peaceful setting; progressively relax each part of your body, starting with your feet and moving up to your head.
• Certain nutrients are important for sleep. Unless you're sure you're getting these in your daily diet, consider supplementing magnesium (500 milligrams/day) and calcium (1200 milligrams/day). If you can, take half in the morning and half before bed.
• The neurotransmitter serotonin aids sleep; it is made from an amino acid, tryptophan, so consider taking 500-1000 milligrams of tryptophan just before bed. If you wake up in the middle of the night and can't easily fall back to sleep, consider 1 milligram of melatonin taken sublingually (under the tongue). You could also eat a banana or something else that's quick and easy; rising blood sugar will lift insulin levels, which will help transport more tryptophan into your brain. You can usually get tryptophan and melatonin at a health food store; do not supplement either of these if you are breastfeeding or taking psychiatric medication'(unless your doctor tells you it's fine).

Good night!

For Journaling

Just add a quick note at the beginning of each daily journal entry, recording how many hours of sleep you got last night. Simply taking note in this way will begin to bring your attention to strategies for sleeping more, such as those listed above. As a further step, write about the reasons that kept you kept you from getting to sleep earlier last night. Also: write down how many hours you want to get tonight.

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PRACTICES INDEX

Cultivate Mindfulness

Practice of the Week
Cultivate Mindfulness

Category: Key Supporting Practices: Some particularly key practices/observances that will support your developing spirituality.

From the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center at UCLA website (marc.ucla.edu):

Contemporary culture in the United States is marked by extraordinary advances in science and technology, yet coupled with these advances is an increasing sense of pressure, complexity and information overload. Individuals across the lifespan are feeling tremendous stress, which is contributing to a variety of mental and physical health problems and diseases.

Mindful awareness can be defined as paying attention to present moment experiences with openness, curiosity, and a willingness to be with what is. It is an excellent antidote to the stresses of modern times. It invites us to stop, breathe, observe, and connect with one's inner experience. There are many ways to bring mindfulness into one's life, such as meditation, yoga, art, or time in nature. Mindfulness can be trained systematically, and can be implemented in daily life, by people of any age, profession or background.

In the last ten years, significant research has shown mindfulness to address health issues such as lower blood pressure and boost the immune system; increase attention and focus, including aid those suffering from ADHD; help with difficult mental states such as anxiety and depression, fostering well-being and less emotional reactivity; and thicken the brain in areas in charge of decision making, emotional flexibility, and empathy.

In this video, Susan Smalley of the Mindful Awareness Research Center, and co-author of Fully Present: The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness, explains:

From Karen Kissel Wegela, "Practicing Mindfulness Without Meditating," Psychology Today (HERE):

While the most direct way to cultivate mindfulness is the sitting practice of mindfulness-awareness meditation, not everyone is ready for, or interested in, doing that....

Principles of good mindfulness practice:
1. Paying attention to the moment-to-moment details of experience
2. Paying particular attention to the body and one's experience of it
3. Recognizing the experience of mind and not getting caught in memories of the past or plans for the future
4. Trying neither too much nor too little
5. Letting go of distractions and paying attention to the present moment
6. Noticing one's experience without judging it

I work with my clients to identify the activities that they already engage in that can become occasions for practicing mindfulness. Most people have a number of possibilities. Practically all sports can work: basketball, baseball, soccer, volleyball, and so on. What's it like to stand at the foul line before you try to make a free throw?

Other physical activities can be used, too: biking to work in traffic, walking the dog, going for a jog, shoveling the driveway, buying groceries, picking out what to wear, putting on make-up, driving the car. What these activities have in common is the opportunity to pay attention to sense perceptions in the present moment: what one can see, hear, smell, taste or touch.

When we engage in these activities, especially if we are willing to let go of distractions like listening to an iPod or playing the car radio, they give us the chance to tune into what is happening right now. We can pay attention to our sense perceptions, our emotions, and our thoughts.

I often walk our dogs in the morning. When I am using my walk time as a mindfulness practice, I pay attention to all my senses. This time of year the branches are bare, and the ground is often icy in patches. I pay attention to where I place my feet. This takes even more awareness when I have to dogs with me, running one way and another in their eagerness to check out all the smells. I guess they are doing their own sniffing practice! I pay attention to the movement of the dogs, the sloshy sounds of the traffic nearby on the wet street, the crows that caw from dumpster behind the market. I notice smells -- sometimes the moist earth, other times the smell of dog poop as I pick it up in a newspaper bag. I feel the cold air on my face and the thoughts about wishing I'd worn my warmer hat. As we move along, the sights, smells, sounds and feelings change. My emotions how my irritation with Sadie, as she pulls on the leash and barks as she tries to get to the neighbor's dog, changes to delight as she bounces happily along soon afterward. I notice tenderness as Sunny starts to limp, and I remove the burr she's picked up on her paw. I note the sharp pinch as I get stuck by the burr myself. When I find my mind wandering to the meeting I have later at school, I simply come back to the present moment with the dogs.

Other activities that lend themselves to cultivating mindfulness are cleaning the house, cooking dinner, working on the car, paying attention to people as we speak with them at work, filing papers, typing. We can also pay attention to body experiences when we feel well or when we feel ill. Bringing mindfulness to physical pain is particularly illuminating. We may find that we have added tension to what might otherwise be a tolerable experience and made it worse.

We can attend to our emotions when we feel uneasy, happy, sad, scared. There's a whole range of emotions we can attend to. In fact, in therapy, this is often our work together: bringing mindfulness to the experience of emotions as they are arising. Some experiences are more difficult to do this with, and it's best to practice bringing mindfulness to easier ones first. For example, it's quite difficult to bring mindfulness to intense experiences of anger. Still, the more we attend to our present experience, the more we cultivate the courage to be present with whatever experience we are having.

With all of these activities, we begin by setting an intention to be mindful of our experience. It's best to pick a particular activity as your mindfulness practice. Getting too ambitious and thinking we can bring mindfulness to everything right away is, for most people, trying too hard.

As always, it is important to be gentle but also steady. So pick a particular activity and set a particular amount of time when you're going to use it as a practice. Then, gently pay attention to the sensations in your body; note your sense perceptions, your emotions, and your thoughts as they come and go. Notice when you hang on to a feeling or thought. Let it go when you can. If you forget that you're practicing mindfulness, just start again without giving yourself a hard time.

There's really no limit to the different activities that can become opportunities to practice and cultivate mindfulness. Happy practicing!

See also "Practice of the Week: Be Mindful" and "Practice of the Week: Mindfulness"

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PRACTICES INDEX